


with some lost thing in the dark

by lavenderlotion



Category: X-Men (Alternate Timeline Movies)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Charles Xavier Needs a Hug, Charles Xavier in a Wheelchair, Charles is angry, Erik Lehnsherr Being a Drama Queen, Getting Back Together, Light Angst, Love Confessions, M/M, Mutation, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-04
Updated: 2020-07-04
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:54:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25068745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lavenderlotion/pseuds/lavenderlotion
Summary: It has been far too many years for Charles to count since the last time he was allowed to feel Erik’s mind like this; there is no helmet blocking his path, no steel-like shielding of mental walls to keep Charles out, no other telepath battling him as he tries to access Erik’s mind.There is nothing holding him back, and Charles has always been a greedy man.
Relationships: Erik Lehnsherr/Charles Xavier
Comments: 44
Kudos: 108





	with some lost thing in the dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [librata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/librata/gifts).



> Librata said _"Just imagining Erik showing up in the middle of the night with a green lil bundle like “you wanna be her other dad”_ and I wrote another erik-dramatically-coming-to-an-angry-heartbroken-charles-in-the-night fic

For the first few, bleary seconds, Charles isn’t sure what wakes him. There is _something_ that draws him from his slumbering, something playing along the edges of his consciousness that is... while not unfamiliar, unexpected enough that it pulls him to the land of the living. It takes him several long minutes to grasp just what that is, seeing as he’s coming up from a deep sleep, but when he does his breath catches in his throat and he jolts into full wakefulness instantaneously. 

_Erik._

Pushing his mind outward, Charles feels the ever-familiar brush of Erik’s thoughts along his psyche and it feels... God, Charles has no idea _how_ it feels. It has been far too many years for Charles to count since the last time he was allowed to feel Erik’s mind like this; there is no helmet blocking his path, no steel-like shielding of mental walls to keep Charles out, no other telepath battling him as he tries to access Erik’s mind. 

There is nothing holding him back, and Charles has always been a greedy man. 

He takes to Erik’s mind like a starving man would to a feast, and Charles embeds himself into the very depths of Erik’s psyche because he _can,_ because he’s being allowed, because this can’t be anything other than permission to do so, not when Erik has amassed so many tricks over the years to keep him out. 

There is nothing to hold Charles back as he sinks into the warm comfort that Erik’s mind has always brought to him. It is absolutely beautiful, the way Erik is able to organize his mind. Charles has always marvelled at the way Erik keeps his thoughts like one would keep a well-organized filing cabinet, or like one of the very complex computer systems Hank is fond of making. As Charles opens drawers and launches programs with barely any restraint, only a breath away from immersing himself into _everything,_ it feels as if a weight that had sat on his chest for decades has been lifted off, and then he jolts upward in complete and utter surprise. 

There is no way...

_Oh, that utter fool._

Charles transfers himself quickly and easily into his chair. After two decades, it’s fairly easy, but Charles knows he’s going to lose strength one day. He’s not let himself think too deeply on the matter or what he might do when that day comes, but each time he moves himself in or out of his chair, he acknowledges the fleeting thought that there’ll soon be a day when he’ll not be able to so himself. 

This is certainly not the time to be thinking such thoughts, however, and he easily pushes that aside to focus on the far more pressing matters at hand, ones that have his hands shaking as he pushes himself through long hallways and a longer foyer, right to the front door that he doesn’t bother to pull open. He waits and watches. Charles knows that Erik is aware of his presence. His metal-sense had singled in on Charles’ chair even before Charles first touched his mind.

The doors remain closed. Charles counts to ten. Tells himself this is bigger than past hurts. Than his heartbreak. Instead of wheeling forward and opening the grand double doors, he reaches into the warm, bright spot of power that has always sat deep within Erik’s chest and uses the other man’s mutation to swing the doors open. 

As rusty as he is, one of the doors slam against the front hall, but Charles thinks it rather adds to the dramatics. 

Dramatics that Erik is certainly doing his best to echo, not that there is a single part of Charles that is surprised. He’s always been one for the dramatics, after all. Erik is wearing a dark trench coat that billows down past his knees, despite the wretched humidity they’ve been facing this summer. He has a hat on his head that is casting half his face in shadows, to the point where Charles can’t even see Erik’s eyes until he steps into the doorway with a bundle of black blankets held securely against his chest. 

Of course, Charles knows why Erik’s here. The man had come to him without anything standing in Charles’ way, after all. Erik had to have known that Charles would have taken that as an invitation—it only takes a second to confirm Charles’ suspicion—but he doesn’t say a thing. Erik has come to him. Erik is the one in need of aid. Erik is the one that left, _every fucking time._

He can be the one to start this conversation. 

Clearly, he realizes that as well, as after a few moments of neither of them saying a thing, Erik clears his throat loudly. 

“I have a daughter,” Erik begins. Charles knows this, of course. He also knows why that’s brought Erik here. 

He might be a smidge petty, but it’s only been thirty-some years since he had his heart broken. He figures it’s called for. “That’s very interesting,” he begins, and feels vindictive when he demands, “now what are you doing here?”

Erik stares at him from under the shadow of his hat and doesn’t say anything. It’s not too much of a better look than his helmet was, though Charles does appreciate the lack of telepathy-blocking the fedora does. It is also black, because of course it is, which is far better than Erik’s usual costume. 

He still looks ridiculous. 

“She deserves a better father than I can be,” Erik tells him seriously. There’s a tone threaded through his voice that Charles has never heard from him before. Something sacrificial, maybe. For, as much as Charles has given up, as much as he was _willing_ to give up, Erik never let go of the things he wanted, and he held even tighter to the things he believed in. 

Maybe he’s grown, during the last handful of years. 

Even still, Charles sucks in a sharp breath at the declaration, said with as much surety as Erik has ever said anything. If there is one thing that Charles has never been accused of, it would be loving too weakly. 

“Erik, you would make a _wonderful_ father, don’t you ever dare to say otherwise.” Charles keeps his voice firm. He’s used to dealing with troublesome young children now, and he takes on the same stern tone while speaking with them that he employs now in the face of Erik’s ridiculousness. 

Erik doesn’t seem impressed, but Charles doesn’t much care. 

“Perhaps...” Charles hears the words that Erik cannot say, of course, already so entangled in the most beautiful mind he’s ever seen, still just as extraordinary three decades after that first moment he’d submerged himself so deeply into Erik’s mind it had felt, for those few timeless moments under the water, that they’d become one. _Perhaps we could raise her together._

 _Think very carefully about what you’re asking Erik,_ Charles projects the words with so much power that Erik stumbles back a step and visibly winces. Charles isn’t the meek boy he’d once been, thirty but holding on to years younger in a desperate bid to grasp simplicity in an ever-changing world he hadn’t been sure he could keep up with. 

He’s grown into a very strong man. So has Erik, in his own right, but Charles isn’t who he once was. 

Neither of them are. 

Erik has always had a skilful touch when it came to projecting thoughts. Charles rather felt like he was the cause of Erik’s ability, seeing as there had been _many_ nights of love-making during which they’d communicated only in the mind-space Charles had crafted for them. As good as he once was, he’s better now, and Erik projects his sentence with an amount of tenderness that causes Charles’ eyes to begin to water without his permission. 

_As if I’d need to think about how wholly I love you._

And that... it’s too much.

“It’s never stopped you before,” Charles snaps, bitter and hurting, able to hear the sorrow in his own voice. It’s been thirty-fucking-years and Charles suddenly feels like he did on that beach. 

The fucking _bastard._

“We’ve never had a daughter before, Shatz,” Erik says it so simply. Like it hasn’t been three decades. Like the past doesn’t even matter. Like Erik hadn’t broken his heart countless times. 

Like Charles hadn’t let him, each and every single time. 

But... maybe it _doesn’t_ matter. This time, when he immerses himself into the beautiful compartmentalization that makes up Erik’s mind, he doesn’t hold himself back from the corners he’d avoided before. This time, when he sinks into Erik’s thoughts, he _looks_ for the cupboards he’d kept closed, opens the doors he’d left locked, and he takes in, breathless and hurting and healing and becoming whole, everything that Erik feels for him. 

And good heavens, it’s the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen. 

With a shaking voice, Charles asks, “We? You’re not even going to give me a chance to answer?” even as Erik walks closer. 

“Please. You, turn away a child?” Erik places the bundle in his lap before he falls to his knees at Charles’ feet. “I love you.”

“You are the most ridiculous man I have ever met and you have to make me breakfast in bed every morning for the rest of our lives,” Charles demands of him, wondering of himself if he’s making the biggest mistake of his life. 

But... that’s always been the thing about Erik Lehnsherr. 

No matter what, no matter how badly he’s hurt Charles, no matter how empty he’s been left to feel, no matter how many nights he’s laid awake, wondering what he could have done to make him stay, Erik has never felt like a mistake. Not to Charles. Not when Charles loved Erik with every bit of himself. Not when loving Erik felt like a fundamental part of who Charles was. 

_Still_ feels like a fundamental part of who Charles _is,_ despite it all. 

No. Erik Lehnsherr has never been a mistake. He won’t be now.

“Any other demands?” Erik asks with a raised eyebrow and a collection of deep-set wrinkles around his eyes. He’s gorgeous. Kneeling at Charles’ feet, he hands unfelt on Charles’ knees but still gripping the soft material of his sleep pants. His eyes have a desperate edge to them that Charles hasn’t seen for a lifetime, and he knows it isn’t only because of the bundle now sat in his lap. 

Charles hums as a way to show he’s thinking. Rather, he stares at the shock of electric green hair he can see from the baby in his lap. A child. Charles has long since considered the possibility of siring his own children that of a distant dream. He’s had a full enough life, running the school and caring for his students as if they were his own. 

There is something of what Erik is offering him that feels like more. _He could be a father,_ Charles thinks, breathless, and then realizes _he could be a father alongside Erik._

“Orgasms. Countless orgasms, seeing as how many years you have to make up for. Oh, and that lovely little pastry dessert that you make. I want that for dessert every single Sunday.” 

“The one with the cream filling?”

“Of course!” 

“Of course,” Erik agrees, disgustingly smug, so Charles kisses him to shuts him up.

And then he keeps kissing him. They are raising a daughter together, after all. 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](https://lavender-lotion.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> kudos aren’t the same as getting a comment, not even close. so a comment, as short and sweet or as sprawling and sporadic as you can manage, would be _greatly_ appreciated! don't know what to comment? how about _”this was great!”_ or _“awesome work!”_
> 
> i run an x-men discord server! check it out [here!](https://discord.gg/3uG3VNP)


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